Travels in the southwest states
No, we are not at Saint Peter’s Basilica. But we are near a royal place. People have their own most reverent places to go. Folks might go to Saint Peter’s, the Hurva Synagogue, the Pashupatinath Temple, the Masjid al‑Haram Mosque. The Simpsons go to the First Church of Springfield. The Slowskys go to Franklin’s BBQ… Read More The Basilica of ATX – May 2023
I am kind of excited about a new feature on our web site – the Slowsky Map! At the top of the travelwiththeslowskys.com home page, you will find a button to click called Slowsky Map. The map is intended to provide an easy-to-use way for you to find our experiences (previous posts) geographically. If you… Read More New Blog Feature! – Apr 2023
Resort. I had to look up the word because I felt I may have missed or forgotten its’ meaning. I mean, it’s not like we have never stayed in a resort. In fact, we have stayed in some of the finest resorts in the world. Years ago, I called on some of the top resort… Read More RV Resort – Nov 2022
We sold our house and are working our way west to Denver – hed’n to the wed’n. Yup, our son will be getting married in November, so we are taking a slow stroll west. First stop? See old friends (sorry, did that sound catty or judgmental?) at TCPC (Tennessee Cumberland Plateau Campground), one of our… Read More Hed’n to the Wed’n – Oct 2022
We don’t write a year-in-review post every year, but when we do, I always start by thinking, what the hell did we even do this past year? And after going through our pictures, I’m like – wow – we did a bunch! Of course, this is not an historical world view of 2021 – just… Read More 2021 in Review – Dec 2021
2020 has been the worst year ever – right? Watching 2020 unfold was like watching porn. First it was titillating, then it felt unseemly, and lastly you got a sinking feeling in the pit in your stomach like you get two minutes after wolfing down a quarter pounder and large fry. No happy ending, so… Read More 2020 in Review – Dec 2020
Since this is (arguably) a travel blog, I thought I might talk about… travel. You can be forgiven if you have already forgotten what “travel” is. Perhaps this is where you queue the Dave Matthews Band, The Space Between… or the Eagles, Taking it Easy. This post in particular is about tweens. No, not teens,… Read More Tweens – May 2020
We just spent the last month in (mostly) rural America, driven primarily on back roads. Upon our return home, for some unexplained reason, I logged into my LinkedIn account. Why, you ask? No clue – purely random. I hadn’t logged on in memory (my blog posts do automatically post on LinkedIn – but without my… Read More LinkedIn… and Rural America – Feb 2020
Want to know the most beautiful road in America? We’ll get to that shortly. Patience (Yoda). We finished up our stint at the fireworks show, and were now prepared to head east towards home. But we wanted to map a route that a) was not on interstate highways, b) was pretty and/or interesting, and c)… Read More Eastward Ho! – Feb 2020
You know your unhealthy interest in fireworks is excessive if it has caused you to make a 1,500-mile trip to attend the Western Winter Blast, an assemblage of like-minded individuals who have a slightly outsized and unnatural attraction to exploding cylinder shells. Combine Woodstock (add 40 years to the average attendee’s age), the tailgating of… Read More Lake Havasu City (AZ) – Feb 2020
This will be a short post, but it has been confirmed (photos don’t lie) – the pot of gold is located in the campground dump station! You can all breathe a sigh of relief. Or perhaps that’s not the best analogy. We camped again at Organ Pipe National Monument in southwest Arizona, literally on the… Read More Organ Pipe – Feb 2020
Spectacular. Simplest way I way can say to describe a short stay at Whitewater Draw. You likely have never heard of Whitewater Draw – I never had. But my bride had and scheduled it into our trip. Whitewater Draw is a wildlife preserve in southern Arizona, located on and around an ephemeral lake – a… Read More Whitewater Draw – Feb 2020
Admittedly our stop in Las Cruces was designed as a “utility” stop… do laundry, shop for food, really cool stuff like that. Awesome you say? Totally! Best. Laundromat. Ever! Kidding. We camped at Siesta RV Park, although “camped” would be better described as “parked”. But as said, our goal was utility and this campground (parking… Read More Las Cruces (NM) – Feb 2020
“The stars at night are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas.” Technically we are a bit south and west of the heart of Texas, but I think we can be forgiven for a little literary license. We have been to many parts of Texas, yet we have barely scratched the surface. For… Read More Southwest Texas – Feb 2020
It’s been three years since our last visit to Big Bend National Park (TX), and we again realize why we love this place so much. It is not for the “epic” things you see (think Mount Rushmore, Half Dome, El Capitan…), but instead the myriad “little” things of beauty here. The fact is, you can… Read More Big Bend NP – Feb 2020
Keep Austin weird. We’re doing our part, just by being here. Forgive me if I repeat myself, but Austin is one of our favorite places. One of these days we’re just going to have to spend a month or two here – get it out of our system. But for now… We took several walks… Read More Austin – Jan 2020
We are camped at an Airstream-only campground (NTAC – North Texas Airstream Community) in Hillsboro, TX as a home base for a few days. I think it is common knowledge that we Airstreamers are like lemmings. “Lemmings have periodic population booms and then disperse in all directions, seeking the food and shelter their natural habitats… Read More Waco – Jan 2020
It doesn’t seem possible, but at the end of this month (technically a month later for Karen) we will have been retired for 5 years! What the hell have we done? Retirement, for those uninitiated, is when you shovel your driveway down to bare pavement two hours after a major storm. Being anal retentive helps. Retirement is… Read More 5 Years Post Retirement – Mar 2019
If our stay in Palm Springs was sublime, then our very short stay in Austin was ridiculous. We LOVE Austin, although this time around we did not get to stay nearly long enough as we would like – practically an overnight. We traveled from Palm Springs and a campground (Outdoor Resort) that was very homogenous,… Read More Austin – Mar 2018
“Picture yourself in a boat on a river, With tangerine trees and marmalade skies. Someone calls you, you answer quite slowly, A girl with kaleidoscope eyes….” On our journey west, we stopped in Rodeo, NM, a place known (by astronomers) for its viewing potential into the deep, dark skies. Oddly enough, we showed up on… Read More Deep Skies – Feb 2018
Almost to the day for me, it has been 3 years since I (we) retired. Oh, how I miss those days of quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily, hourly forecasts… And who doesn’t love a well-placed flaming email distributed to the world. After retirement, one is forced to forego the joys and luxury of business travel: cramped… Read More 3 Years Post Retirement – Mar 2017
Let me just start by saying that on Monday morning I will be checking myself into the Betty Ford Detox Center for Barbecue Abuse. Grab a cold beer or two and sit back – this was quite a stop on our journey. We made Austin a destination on our trip for two very good reasons:… Read More Austin SXSW – Mar 2017
It has been years but we revisited San Antonio, home to the Alamo, the Riverwalk – and the Pearl Neighborhood. We used this chance to meet up with friends, enjoy the Riverwalk, and test out a few craft beers and some excellent food. We had heard or been told that the Pearl neighborhood was a… Read More San Antonio – Mar 2017
Bubbling crude… oil that is… black gold… Texas tea… a few of us remember the Beverly Hillbillies. West Texas represents to me a microcosm of some of the many challenges we face today; the tension between growth, convenience, natural preservation and environmental protection. West Texas is an area that encapsulates these challenges perhaps better than… Read More West Texas – Mar 2017
We have checked the Guadalupe Mountains National Park box. Typically when we visit a national park we say to ourselves that we will absolutely have to come back to visit stuff we weren’t able to see. There is much (let’s call that most) of the park we did not see. But for whatever reason I… Read More Guadalupe Mountains NP – Mar 2017
I don’t really do campground reviews, and this is not a campground review. BUT, the Cherry Creek State Park is a most excellent urban oasis near Denver, CO. We were here to act as sherpas evaluating apartments for our son – a freaking abysmal experience I might add; it has been a while since the… Read More Cherry Creek SP – Mar 2017
We knew when good friends of ours gave us a US map that identified the national parks in this country that we were in trouble. Not bad enough, you could identify your personal weaknesses by seeing all the “un-visited” parks we had yet to darken. Carlsbad Caverns National Park, in Carlsbad, NM was on that… Read More Carlsbad Caverns – Mar 2017
This is our second time to see White Sands National Monument in Alamogordo, NM, although it is the first time we were actually able to see it (the first time it was so windy we blew it off – no pun). White Sands sits in the basin of the Chihuahuan Desert, and abuts the White… Read More White Sands – Mar 2017
For anyone who has ever traveled in the desert, you know that 98% of the effort to construct roads (or anything) is to manage flooding. We are talking about an area that might get 6 inches of rain – per year. Death Valley gets about 2 inches per year. Anyway, I mention this because we… Read More Desert Addendum – Feb 2017
We have been camped out for a few days at the Lake Pleasant Regional Park in Morristown, AZ. With the cell phone tower as close as it is, I feel confident we have been spayed and neutered. I seem to be picking up Radio Free Europe on my fillings, and we seem to have a… Read More Lake Pleasant – Feb 2017